In order to get to East Moline, IL we had to fly from New Orleans to St Louis, where we played at “The Players Club” for 2 days and drove from there for 4 hours. We are lucky that we have friends almost everywhere we go to and our very good friend arranged a ride for us from St Louis to East Moline and back. The event called “Bar Box Classic” with 8-Ball and 10-Ball played on a 7 foot table and a One Pocket (500$ entry) tournament played on a nine footer on the side. Coming to the event for some reason I didn’t think of anything but “Diamond” bar tables, but ended up playing on “Valley’s”. That’s a good lesson for me to check the equipment before going to a tournament. It was a good experience for me to play some 8-Ball. My 8-Ball patterns aren’t the best due to the lack of knowledge and lack of time playing this game, but I tried my best to look like I’m a “bar table senior”. Finished 7/8th in 8-Ball. One Pocket was good this time for me. I beat Randy Jordan 4/0, then Robert Frost 4/0, finally defeated Alex Pagulayan in the decider and was gonna play Jesse Bowman in the finals, but due to a heavy schedule we decided to split 1/2nd and not play it. 10-Ball was definitely the toughest one for me. I started with two wins and lost my third one. Losing early in big fields is tough, cause you have to play nonstop after that. I managed to win 8 matches on the losers side and lost in the semifinal to Robert Frost. Overall I have mixed feelings about this event, but definitely good experience for me. Happy to finish good in the One Pocket event. Traveling in the United States without your own car is a lot of hustle, but that will change one day…
